Copy 1, Volume 3

The works of Alexander Pope, esq. with notes and illustrations by himself and others. To which are added a new life of the author, an estimate of his poetical character and writings, and occasional remarks / by William Roscoe. Esq.

  • Pope, Alexander, 1688-1744
Date:
1824
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The works of Alexander Pope, esq. with notes and illustrations by himself and others. To which are added a new life of the author, an estimate of his poetical character and writings, and occasional remarks / by William Roscoe. Esq. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    53/402 (page 39)
    For a person of only twenty years old to have produced such an Essay, so replete with a knowledge of life and manners, such ac- curate observations on men and books, such variety of literature, such strong good sense, and refined taste and judgment, has been the subject of frequent and of just admiration. It may fairly en- title him to the character of being one of the first of critics, though surely not of Poets, as Dr. Johnson asserts. Dr. Warburton, endeavouring to demonstrate, what Addison could not discover, nor what Pope himself, according to the tes- timony of his intimate friend, Richardson, ever thought of or in- tended, that this Essay was written with a methodical and. syste- matical regularity, has accompanied the whole with a long and laboured commentary, in which he has tortured many passages to support this groundless opinion. Warburton had certainly wit, genius, and much miscellaneous learning; but was perpetually dazzled and misled by the eager desire of seeing every thing in a new light unobserved before, into perverse interpretations and forced comments. His passion being (as Longinus expresses it) +3 Eves vonoets ases xwey. It is painful to see such abilities wasted on such unsubstantial objects—accordingly his notes on Shaks- peare have been totally demolished by Edwards and Malone; and Gibbon has torn up by the roots his fanciful and visionary inter- pretation of the sixth book of Virgil: and but few readers, I be- lieve, will be found that will cordially subscribe to an opinion lately delivered, that his notes on Pope’s Works are the very best ever given on any classic whatever. . For to mstance no other, surely the attempt to reconcile the doctrines of the Essay on Man, to the doctrines of Revelation, is the rashest adventure in which ever critic yet engaged ; this is, in truth, to divine, rather than to explain an author’s meaning. For these reasons, it is not thought proper to accompany this Essay with a perpetual commentary—a poem, as hath been well observed, that consists of precepts, is so far arbitrary and imme- thodical, that many of the paragraphs may change places with no apparent inconvenience ; for of two or more positions, depending on some remote principle, there is seldom any cogent reason, why one should precede the other. Warton.